User talk:Kodia/Archive 3
A container for all of the fanfic It's difficult to keep count of all of the fanfic listed on the site right now because they're in so many categories. Would it be possible to tag anything with a "Works by" category with al "All Fan Fiction" category as well? That way we've have a central category that contains everything and it should be relatively easy to tell how much we have and what we have (and pick out the disambiguations I need to fix). Regards, Susanmgarrett 19:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC) :Just to be sure I understand what you're asking...do you want to include all works of fan fiction in the Category:Fan Fiction category? --Kodia 19:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC) ::I see Susan's point. She wants a general category for all fan fic, as well as the more specific headings. However, if we do that, then we need to pull the three pages that are already in that category out of the mass (especially Articles of interest to fan fiction writers), so they don't get buried. Either tag them with * or invent a new category for pages that relate to fan fiction writing. -- Greer Watson 21:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC) :::I think having everything in the Category:Fan Fiction would be over-whelming. If we could add a subcategory called Category:All Fan Fiction, that would provide a place to put all of the fan fiction and would easily differentiate the pages from other content. :::Susanmgarrett 04:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC) ::::I'm not sure I see the distinction between having an overwhelming Fan Fiction category and having an equally overwhelming All Fan Fiction category—because, when you come right down to it, the overwhelmingness of any such category will come from the sheer numbers of stories involved. However, putting all of them in there is precisely your point. ::::We need to consider the needs of the person using the wiki. If they are looking for fan fiction, the most logical place for them to start looking is Category:Fan Fiction. So that seems to me to be the place for the looooooong alphabetical list of pages. ::::In addition to the long list of pages, it would also have (as it now has) a list of categories—these being primarily the various subcategories by type (format, author, genre, etc.). ::::That still leaves us with the few pages that are currently in Category:Fan Fiction. Two of these, FK Wars and Story challenge, are actually the main articles for two of the subcategories, and (presumably) have also been listed in them. ::::However, that brings us back to Articles of interest to fan fiction writers. That's intended as a list of resources. So, as it isn't actually fan fiction at all(!), perhaps it should be removed from Category:Fan Fiction altogether. ::::That would leave Category:Fan Fiction containing (a) pages, each of which represents a story/poem/etc., and (b) subcategories of fiction. ::::We would then need another subsection (perhaps Category:Resources for Fan Fiction Writers) with Articles of interest to fan fiction writers as its main article. All the pages listed there would then get that category added. -- Greer Watson 08:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC) I think Greer's suggestions are a good option to keep fan fiction separate from articles related to fan fiction's production.--Kodia 17:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC) :Done. :Articles of interest to fan fiction writers is now the lead article in Category:Resources for fan writers. Each of the things mentioned in the article has now had that category added. I've also put a link to it on the Category:Fan Fiction page. -- Greer Watson 11:10, 28 January 2009 (UTC) ::Category:Fan Fiction is therefore now free of pages—and available for the listing of all the stories that fans have written. Which means that Susan can now go back to every one of the hundreds of pages she has created, and add "Category:Fan Fiction" to them. (What do you mean, you wished you'd kept your mouth shut?) -- Greer Watson 11:14, 28 January 2009 (UTC) I'm wondering if it might now be more efficient at some point for me to learn the voodoo magic required to run a "bot" that will troll all the pages and make some of these changes automagically based on parameters I specify. And I call it voodoo because of the discussions I've heard with some of the staff of the sacrifices needed to make it happen (I did hear the words "live rooster" in that discussion). However...the Wikia staff is pretty open to requests for help and I have a good relationship with at least one of them, so maybe I can say pretty please a whole lot and he'll help me out so that something like this wouldn't be nearly as onerous a task as the manual labor of changing all the pages again. I'll check into it. The manual changes could certainly start now, if needs be, but I'll check into it just the same.--Kodia 14:04, 28 January 2009 (UTC) :Okay lots more effort involved than I have time for at the moment to learn. Bots will have to be something for a future learning session.--Kodia 23:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC) Crossed-over series I notice that Highlander has just topped the list of Special:WantedPages with 35 links. Does this mean that we going to have a page for each TV series/movie/cartoon/etc. for which a crossover has been written? Not a complaint. Just a request for policy info. -- Greer Watson 12:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC) :It means, I suppose, that we should come up with a policy. At what point do we start having a page? Should we start having a page whenever someone can come up with enough information? Should we group them by some sort of grouping and break them out as we find an editor willing to write more or after we find out that a page is just too long and can form its own article? All of these are possible. Tons of little short pages have a tendency annoy the pee out of me, but that's me. Oddly, this is only true of articles, not categories. So, should we have an article page? Sure. Why not. Should we have articles for all of them? That's up to the community. And right now the truly active community is...you, me, Susan, and to some small extent, DarkLantern. What do *you* think?--Kodia 15:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC) ::Should a Forever Knight wiki have a page about another television series? That's the first question. ::If so, then is the mere fact that someone decided to write a crossover sufficient merit? In some instances, it looks very much as if the crossover was done just to prove that it could be done—which, come to think of it, could be said of some pairings. No UnSuited story pairs LaCroix and Schanke without a strong element of "I can contrive anything!!!" about it. ::Is the real function of including pages for other series simply identification for the benefit of someone who says, "They did a crossover with who? Never heard of them." Do people read crossovers when they don't know the other side of it? ::On the other hand, the function of such pages may have to do with relevance. Take Highlander (and one or two others): there's a real argument for having a page that explains why that particular series is so popular for crossovers. ::Or take Alias Smith and Jones, which has only one example of a crossover. Is the only reason it was done just to prove it possible? Well, there's actually a thematic similarity between the two shows (the guilty wanting to reform), that indicates that perhaps there may be more going on, even though the crossover involves Janette rather than Nick. ::Arguments all ways. Inclusive for identification (all crossover series); ones with more than X crossovers; justification pages only. ::I agree that stubs are irritating. However, they are often intended as placeholders for a potentially longer piece yet to be written. The myriad actor stubs I did, would be an example. Theoretically, someone someday will fill each of them out. -- Greer Watson 16:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC) FK4 I've just written a big section on the history of my virtual series, FK4. Would you please read it, and tweak it thoroughly? (Bearing in mind your reservations about people writing about themselves.) -- Greer Watson 08:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC) :Sure I'd be happy to.--Kodia 13:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC) :I have to express my complete surprise that you identify as female. I honestly thought for some reason you identified as male. I believe your name threw me. My knowledge of "Greer" is from the Greek version "Gregory", not the Scottish, apparently. You have my most sincere apologies for call you sir by mistake at any time in the past.--Kodia 13:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC) ::Actually, you're not far off. "Greer" is actually a surname, and a variant of Gregor or MacGregor. And I have, at various times, got magazine subscriptions addressed to "Mr", had my bank think I was a man, been put on the voter's list as a man, and—the only one that actually bothered me at all—changed schools in high school and was given a locker in the boys' section. So you're in a lot of company. -- Greer Watson 21:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC) Didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten about this. I'm still looking at it and trying to forumulate some questions for you. (It's good information. I like it.) --Kodia 16:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Discussion moved to Talk:FK4.--Kodia 17:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC) Crossover fandoms We should have an infobox for crossover fandoms. It should have the following: * image and caption * format (film, TV, book, comic) * genre (SF, mystery, horror) * creator/author * company (film/TV)/publisher (comics, books) * date(s) * country of origin * actors (?) And anything else that you can think of that might be relevant. If we do one for every crossover fandom, there wiil be quite a lot of them (eventually, anyway). However, people could find such pages useful for identification. -- Greer Watson 16:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC) :Yep, I've been watching your creation of the start of these. I have to take my auto to the shop for an oil change. I'll see about working on this when I get back from my errands. ::I think I've done enough of these for the moment—enough, anyway, to give an idea of what one of these pages should be like: not too long, but enough to help identify things. I'll maybe do one or two more: there are a few more fandoms here that I know, at least a bit. But there are plenty I know hardly anything about. Some of them I've never even heard of. -- Greer Watson 22:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Initial Creation: Template:Crossover infobox.--Kodia 20:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Screen captures You might compare the top version with the one you just uploaded yourself. Are the screen captures you have been uploading ones that you made yourself? On the whole, the pictures on the new Forever Knight Episode Archives are better quality than those anywhere else except Kristin's site. It's easy for me to upload anything you want. I have all of Nancy's screen captures on my computer. As I was providing her with a bit of assistance while she redid the Archives, she sent me everything for checking as we went. And I've already asked her if it's okay to use them for the wiki, and she agreed. -- Greer Watson 18:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC) :Any picture is better than none and if what I have ends up getting replace, that's absolutely fine. If I've got a bug in me to create a page, I'll typically create the page and add a graphic if I have one in my stash. If you see one in yours that better quality, by all means, upgrade it.--Kodia 20:23, 8 February 2009 (UTC) ::Fair enough. I'll keep an eye out. -- Greer Watson 21:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC) The morgue On Sunday, I was determined that—come hell or high water—I was not going to get sucked into doing anything on the wiki but get the page for the morgue finished. (And you know how that worked out.) However, I have just got it done. Most of the work was on the section on the corridors, but with some minor changes elsewhere as well. Would you mind taking a look through, checking for typos and the like? I still have Nick's loft only about half done, so I don't intend to start work on another of the Sets pages just yet. There's still a bit of work to do on Nick Knight, as well. Nevertheless, I shall start another of the big pages soon: I rather favour doing the one on Toronto, since I've done Canada and Ontario, and that will complete the set. Also, there are a lot of links to it. -- Greer Watson 10:54, 10 February 2009 (UTC) :I like the morgue article. I'd like to see us apply that same kind of sleuthing to even less well known places. I don't suppose you have a writeup on The Raven prepared, do you? I don't think my screenshots really show the set. Just people on the set. And as we both know, mine are crummy quality. :)--Kodia 00:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC) ::Sadly, no. I do, however, have quite a lot of lovely pictures. I can maybe upload them and link them in—and then you, O Ravenette, can have the fun of writing the text to go with them. -- Greer Watson 00:54, 12 February 2009 (UTC) Hmm. Why don't you just upload them and make sure the description of what they're showing is in the image description and that all of them are in one category. If you linked the category itself to the article on The Raven then any enterprising young soul can start on the article without being limited by some structure they may not understand. But I'm definitely game to write it. (And I've not forgotten about your bio article yet.)--Kodia 00:58, 12 February 2009 (UTC) Pictures of the Raven Okay, I've started uploading pictures of the Raven. They are not in one category. They are in two, since the interior was a set and the exterior on location. At this point, you can see the latter at Category:Images of the Raven (exterior). There may be a few pictures I've missed; but you've certainly got enough to be going on with. There are, of course, a lot more pictures of the inside of the club. I've divided them into three basic subcategories, one for each season. That's so that you can easily keep the three decors separate, for the club looked distinctly different each year. (For some reason, people always take care to note that LaCroix redid the Raven without mentioning that the differences between the first and second seasons were even greater.) I've also added smaller subcategories for areas that are quite distinct from the main club. At the moment, that means the back room (which was totally redecorated for Season Two), and the "little booth" from which LaCroix broadcast "at the back", as he told Nick when he took over the club in Black Buddha, Pt. 1. Anyway, you can access all the subcategories for the interior of the club by going to Category:Screenshots of the Raven, and looking in there. -- Greer Watson 12:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC) :That does the rest. I think there may be one or two details that I can crop out, if I spot them going through the files. However, you should certainly have enough here to be getting on with! -- Greer Watson 21:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC) Notes on the Raven Here are a few notes for you: * In Season One, there is no sign of a raised section of the Raven, used for tables in Season Two and a stage in Season Three. * The decor completely changed between Seasons One & Two—enough to make me wonder whether there was major dismantlement and rebuilding. This is not the redecoration that Janette says Alma did for her. * The decor in Season Three is very similar to that of Season Two. LaCroix's changes were more to the feel of the club than the decoration. In particular, the bar seems to be little changed. * The back room is totally different in Seasons One and Two. Note the entrance, the wall paintings in Season One, and the lamps, wrought screen, and fireplace in Season Two. The back room did not appear in Season Three, except in "Sons of Belial" (?? and maybe "Ashes to Ashes", if that's where Vachon and Urs were on the couch together); and it seems to be sparsely decorated there, suggesting perhaps the set had actually been torn down, and what we see was a set built just for the episode. However, the door into the back room (as seen in the main room) is the same. ::No, it also seems to appear in Last Knight. -- Greer Watson 05:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC) * Note that, in a few instances, there are sequences of pictures that, placed side to side, give a broader view of some part of the Raven. ::The entrance in Season Two: ::The bar in Season Three: ::The back room in Season Two: * Check out these! I hope you are now feeling suitably inspired! -- Greer Watson 22:03, 12 February 2009 (UTC) Toffler senior I just put something on the Talk page for Garimay Toffler. Would you add your two cents worth? How should we handle this? -- Greer Watson 10:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC) :Comments added to Talk:Garimay Toffler.--Kodia 17:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC) Major subheads, and their lines This may be something that happens on my browser rather than other people's. At any rate, people are doing it all the time on pages that they make, and it looks awful as I see the page. But probably not the way that they see the page. In distinguishing the various levels of subheads, the wiki not only uses different sizes of text, but also a line across the page. This only happens with the main subhead (the one made with two = signs). The lesser heads don't get the line. The line runs right across the page, through any infoboxes and images. This doesn't especially affect the readability of the box, but it seriously mars any pictures. One method to avoid this is to add the Clear template, Clrr. However, although this is excellent to ensure that the end of a subsection will be completely clear before the next subhead, it's not so good at the top of the page. If you have only a line or two of text before the first heading, and you then put Clrr, you get acres of white, since the infobox is cleared before the text resumes under the heading. This is especially noticeable on Character pages, since often only a line or two of text is used to identify the character in the first paragraph. And the Character infoboxes are relatively long, since they all have pictures. Which the line goes through. With main characters, there's no big problem. One can add to the opening paragraph, which lengthens it down the infobox; and there are usually a lot of subsections in the ToC, which therefore fills up the rest of the left side of the page. By the time you put in the first subhead (Character History), you've cleared the infobox completely. With minor characters, though, this isn't possible. There's just not all that much to say about them. They can be identified fully in a short opening statement, and their ToC is short. As a result, when a Character History subhead is used, its line goes right through the picture. My solution has been to drop the Character History subhead in these cases. Alternatively, the Character History subhead can be dropped down a level (to the three = level), since that isn't marked by a line. What do you prefer? -- Greer Watson 20:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC) :First, it's definitely the Internet Explorer browser that's the problem. IE doesn't follow the standard WWWC rules for HTML markup, unfortunately (few if any browsers really do, to be honest, but them less so). At the top of a page on any non-lengthy character pages I would prefer to remove the character history subheading entirely. In most cases it's unnecessary and does little to improve the flow of information in the article. I absolutely hate the idea of dropping the heading down a level to H3. HATE. Hate hate. Yuck hate. Please please don't hate. I'm using Hate with a capital H here. Have I mentioned it strongly enough to get my point across? If not, I'm happy to elaborate. (Really really hate.) *grin* --Kodia 01:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) ::Fine, I'll take the Character History subheading out in such cases. (My preference, anyway.) In the case of major characters, I'll fatten up the intro. ::As you know perfectly well, most people just use the browser that came with their computer. As a result, Internet Explorer is pretty well the most widespread one in use, at least by people who don't have Macs. Computer geeks aside, that is. -- Greer Watson 02:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Defunct websites I've just started a category for websites that no longer exist. If we are going to cover the history of FK fandom, I figure they are part of it. I've started with Forever Knight - Canon & Trivia, having finally located the binder in which I have all the pages from it that I printed out back in 2004. I have no idea who owned the site, though she probably had the initials CD, since they appear in the url. Actually, Rogers IDed her as "cd397"; but then they ID me as "gwatson2". (I have the same ISP, you see, so I know how their urls work.) My question is this: what should I do about the content of the site? It's not a question of putting in a link to the website, since it no longer exists. But someone once collated all this data thinking people would find it useful. Should that work be abandoned? Basically, what we have here is a list of all canon—well, more or less, and rather less than more (as Gilbert and Sullivan put it). But there's a lot of data here. And I printed it all out. All I have to do is copy it. -- Greer Watson 05:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC) :Oh, another thing. I only got involved in active fandom in 2004, so the number of defunct sites I know about is pretty limited. There are two potential sources of information that I can think of: dead links on websites that haven't been updated for a while, and old bookmarks that haven't been deleted. Have you perhaps got any of the latter, maybe on an old computer? -- Greer Watson 05:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC) I think that the defunct site information is now pretty much free game. As for defunct websites themselves, I can't help but wonder if perhaps a simple list page might night be a better choice than a single page for each defunct site. If we were to do a single list page with a description, then a brief paragraph could describe the majority of that site's information and we could be done with it until, say, the old site's author appeared or some user appeared with considerable info about the site. As for old site bookmarks, no, I'm sad to say I've had enough computer meltdowns that the older links are suitable nuked into orbit. We may be able to rescue some of the information on the Wayback Machine if our printouts and notes aren't complete. --Kodia 14:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC) :Well, as far as Forever Knight - Canon & Trivia is concerned, it now has a page all to itself—with quite a bit on it. But then I obviously do have "considerable info about the site", as you put it, since I printed it out. :For sites where all we have is a name and dead web-address, then a list seems reasonable. The obvious place to put it is on a main article page for the category. -- Greer Watson 18:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Fan fiction categories I just thought I'd mention that I've added three new categories of fan fiction: Last Knight stories, slash fiction, and songfic.-- Black Buddha I've just done a detailed story recap for Black Buddha Pt. 1. Also a list of quotations. Fortunately, I still have the transcription I made when I was writing my Season Five episode, "Dreams of the Buddha". I lost the file for it when my old computer crashed back in 2004 (having been very silly and not made a back-up); but I'd printed the whole thing out. So would you take a look, and play spot-the-typo? I don't intend to do this sort of thing a lot. I have a transcription for Ashes to Ashes, and the first two acts of BB2; but that's it. However, we do need to have a few of these done so that, when we start to ask other fans to pitch in, we have a pattern for them to follow. -- Greer Watson 16:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC) :Do you want me to wait until you're done fiddling? I see that you've been editing and that's the main reason I haven't made any comments.--Kodia 15:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC) ::I think I've basically done. The most recent "fiddling" has mostly just been typos I spotted. -- Greer Watson 17:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC) The Flashbacks category If you check out Category talk:Flashbacks, you will see my reasons for starting pages specifically devoted to plot summaries of each of the flashback scenes. This then raises the question of what to do about the Episode pages. There is a subsection on each page for "Flashback", which is empty at the moment, except for one or two of them. Given that its function is duplicated by the new Flashback articles, I think that—at least eventually—we can dispense with it. The individual scenes will, of course, still be described in their proper place in the Detailed Story Recap. However, I do not propose going through and automatically deleting the Flashback subsections right away. Although few of them actually have anything written at this point, there are a handful that have had images linked in. So that the pertinence of these images isn't lost, I suggest that—for now—the Flashback subsections be left as they are. Transferring any info on them to new Flashback articles just goes on the list of things to do. It's a long list. -- Greer Watson 08:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC) :Oh, yeah. You'll notice that I've started a subsection called Category: Historical Background. Its basically little potted history lessons about the real history behind some of the flashbacks. Some people may find this background sheds a light on events shown in the flashbacks, or provides an interesting contrast (since some of the flashbacks aren't exactly historically accurate). Others may find it a quick handy guide if they're thinking of writing fan fiction around one of the flashbacks. :The format for the pages is something like this: a quick intro definition, followed by a paragraph or two describing the relevant flashback. Then the history lesson. :Obviously most episodes will not have any associated pages in this category. It's specifically for those episodes that have historical connections (as opposed to the period pieces about Nick's history). -- Greer Watson 09:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC) Okay, these are both understandable. I added the historical backgrounds category to the articles of interest to fan-fiction writers because I'm guessing most writers aren't all students of history. (That is, who *really* knows what the Crimean War was all about without looking it up? Not many people, I'd guess.)--Kodia 14:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Blank images I just thought I should mention that there are still images that I can't see. I just uploaded another one that didn't show up on screen: -- Greer Watson 12:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC) :Hmm. And once again I have no trouble at all seeing the picture. I'll ask if there was something that happened that might be related due to the code upgrades they did at the site level.--Kodia 14:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC) ::I still can't see the original missing image, either. (I checked.) Whatever it is, there's certainly something going on. -- Greer Watson 15:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Pictures of guest actors on the episode pages Finally, finally. I just finished the last of those blocks of little photos of the guest actors that accompany the cast list on the Episode pages. There's still a lot of room for tweaking, especially of the size of the pictures. Since they're crops, they come all different sizes; so all I could do was try to adjust them to the same height. Like all wiki-things, this is not graved in stone. Someone, someday, could maybe do a better screen capture of somebody. Or ID some more of the missing ones. I do not guarantee completeness. In fact, I guarantee in''completeness: there are some minor parts where no picture appeared among Nancy's screen captures in the Episode Archives—not even a tiny background shot. For most of the characters, I was ''at least able to make a small, blurry shot that is only moderately recognizable and quite unsuitable for use at any larger size. Fortunately, squidged down tiny (because the block format requires small pixelage), there are also some gorgeous portrait pictures—sometimes of quite minor characters. When people come to do more of the Character pages for the guest actors, there will certainly be plenty of pictures for infoboxes. Along the way, I also added quite a number of actors to the cast lists. A day or so ago, I whipped through Judith Freudenthal's Forever Knight Episode Guide, since I'd discovered that she had the names of a number of bit part actors from Seasons 2 and 3 whose names we didn't have. And, for Season 1, I have been doing another internet search: this identified another batch of those actors whose names we have only from a long list, without knowing the role they played. Some of these actors now have a webpage, or their picture on IMDB, or something like that. Some got IDed off TV.com (or maybe it was TVGuide.com). Anyway, some such site provided a few new Season 1 names, probably taken off actors' resumés or the like. One actor I've met. Others could be IDed because they appeared in a later episode, and I was able to run through the screen captures doing a comparison to identify them. In one case, the actor in the Season 2 episode was one of an unidentified pair (of thugs, or some such), and had appeared in a Season 1 episode doing some role (but I didn't know what). I still was able to match up tiny little head shots and ID the guy. I IDed one actress because she appears on a dentist's webpage, of all things! He does cosmetic dentistry, I guess; and the site has endorsements from various former patients—a lot of them actors. With their pictures, all smiling widely to show off his handiwork. There are weird and wonderful things out there. Anyway, have a look through the episodes. -- Greer Watson 06:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC) :Will do. Thankyou for working on this.--Kodia 12:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)